George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation. "You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?" "Because I was bewildered--frightened, if you will; and it all passed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can't do always the right thing at the right time." "He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I----" "Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry. "Yes; to some old tithe cause--a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause, he said." "Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?" "Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing--whether I could not get him a sight of the register." "What's to be done about it?" asked Henry. "_I_ don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands. "It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!" "Be still, for heaven's sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part." "I don't wish to betray it; I'd do anything rather than bring trouble upon you. But it _ought_ to be told." "Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise." Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back, and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He put his hand into George's. "You have my promise," he said; "but on one condition. I will never speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you to release me from my promise; and if you decline, _I_ shall consider myself no longer bound by it." "Very well; a bargain," said George Prattleton, after a pause. "And now I'm after that scoundrel Rolls. I'll tell _you_ a secret before I go--tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?" "I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there." "Not I. It was Lewis." "Lewis!"